Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Come away with me

When
you are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and
concerns, your successes and failures slowly can lose some of their power over
you. For then your love for this world can merge with a compassionate
understanding of its illusions. Then your serious engagement can merge with an
unmasking smile. Then your concern for others can be motivated more by their
needs than your own. In short: then you can care. Let us therefore live our
lives to the fullest but let us not forget to once in a while get up long
before dawn to leave the house and go to a lonely place.(Sermon text: Mark 1:32-39)

The past 48 hours I have been alone
in a “Monk’s Quarters.” With comforts, I add. It belongs to friends who loan it
to friends who need a come-away-spot. It is a gift I love – not only for the
place itself, but because Denis encourages and supports my being in a place here
where I find renewal. Even when I’m not even sure I’m doing the right things to
make renewal happen. Like HOW early do I need to rise? Is sleeping in allowed? How
much time in prayer? How many pages of serious reading before I
can pick up that NYT Best Seller? Can I just stare over the balcony listening
to bird song for as long as I want?

Tracking spiritual growth is
difficult. Maybe we’re not meant to
“track” it as though it were the Prime Interest Rate. Becoming more holy seems
to happen when we’re not looking. Like the tiny wood anemone I saw yesterday as
I sat on a bench in the woods. It is so diminutive it is barely noticeable.
Suddenly your eyes focus and there it was all along.

Despite my shotgun approach to time
away, God meets me with kindness; my successes and failures do lose some of
their power and I can smile at them, letting them go. Then, for a while at
least, I am ready to crack back into everyday life.

I wish I could give the same
experience to so many of you who have little choice, being where you are with
your obligations. But if the chance arises. Don’t hesitate! Grab it. Thanks for
stopping by and for thinking along with me. Hoping/praying you have strength for days ahead.

Wood Anemone, Root River. Among first forest flowers to bloom in spring.

I also read "when" until I read your reply, Margie. You are not alone. I DID think it was a bold comment and admired the safety and confidence you have in each other that a sarcastic tone would be interpreted correctly.

Beautiful flowers! It's wild flowers out of unexpected places that I love to take pictures of, instead of perfectly-aligned ones in somebody's garden. I so wish that I was a better driver, in order to be able to make U-turns on the road, to take pictures of gorgeous wild flowers even on the side of roads. But unfortunately, my poor driving will only get me, my camera, and my car into doomdom, if I tried. So happy for you that you got to see these pretty flowers to brighten your day!

Sounds like a sweet time away. And such good encouragement not to track our spiritual growth - something I am prone to do in all aspects of life. I've never really outgrown the allure of the gold star on the chart from elementary school.

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Toads Drink Coffee

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Japanese Coffee art: "Kitty chasing fish latte."

Toads, etc.

For many years we lived in Toad Hall, an old American Gothic Foursquare house named for the mansion in Wind in the Willows although ours wasn’t really a mansion, the kids just thought it was. Now we live in a different home – one more suited to aging with dignity – yes, well, we can hope – The House Between. “Between” because we are living that stage of life between now and what is to come. Sound a little macabre? It’s not. We needed move to a space with main floor accessibility for older people who may not always be able to climb stairs to sleep and eliminate. We love this home in a quiet neighborhood with offices overooking the wooded ravine behind where we feed birds and watch coyotes play leap frog. We love knowing, too, that this is not our final place – there is more healing and goodness in the next life. I’ve kept the name of my blog toadsdrinkcoffee because I don’t know how to migrate to a new one. The name is now even more obscure, but it had to do with living in Toad Hall and my addiction to coffee. However, I did migrate my old publication – Notes From Toad Hall– to the new one Letters from the House Between.